There are few systematic histories of Buddhism and very few rigorous philosophical analyzes of their central concepts, more compared to the number of books of inspiration or spiritual help. Buddhism: a historical-philosophical perspective comes to fill this gap at a time when this religion or philosophy is increasingly of interest in Western societies. Taking as a starting point the central concept of Buddhism, the dependent origination, coined by the Buddha at the moment of its illumination, the author goes through the intricacies of its history, full of continuities and discontinuities with its original meaning. Apart from an almost unprecedented clarification of the original intention of this concept in the context of the Indian philosophy and spirituality of the 5th century BC, Miguel Rodríguez de Peñaranda goes through little known or not always well interpreted episodes of the later history: the first councils and schisms, the Mūlamadhyamikākarikā of Nāgārjuna, the development of mahāyāna, and so on. The work ends with some reflections about the possible role of Buddhism in our time from the ideas of contemporary philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas, Gustavo Bueno or Ken Wilber.